‘My Love is like the red, red, Rose
That’s newly sprung in June,
My Love is like the Melody
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.’
and he will love his Love,
‘Till a’ the Seas gang Dry’
Yes—Till a’ the Seas gang dry, my Dear. And then comes some weaker stuff about Rocks melting in the Sun. All Imperfect; but that red, red Rose has burned itself into one’s silly Soul in spite of all. Do you know that one of Burns’ few almost perfect stanzas was perfect till he added two Syllables to each alternate Line to fit it to the lovely Music which almost excuses such a dilution of the Verse?
‘Ye Banks and Braes o’ bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom (so fresh) so fair?
Ye little Birds how can ye sing,
And I so (weary) full of care!
Thou’lt break my heart, thou little Bird,
That sings (singest so) upon the Thorn:
Thou minds me of departed days
That never shall return
(Departed never to) return.’
Now I shall tell you two things which my last Quotation has recalled to me.
Some thirty years ago A. Tennyson went over Burns’ Ground in Dumfries. When he was one day by Doon-side—‘I can’t tell how it was, Fitz, but I fell into a Passion of Tears’—And A. T. not given to the melting mood at all.
No. 2. My friend old Childs of the romantic town of Bungay (if you can believe in it!) told me that one day he started outside the Coach in company with a poor Woman who had just lost Husband or Child. She talked of her Loss and Sorrow with some Resignation; till the Coach happened to pull up by a roadside Inn. A ‘little Bird’ was singing somewhere; the poor Woman then broke into Tears, and said—‘I could bear anything but that.’ I dare say she had never even heard of Burns: but he had heard the little Bird that he knew would go to all Hearts in Sorrow.
Béranger’s Morals are Virtue as compared to what have followed him in France. Yet I am afraid he partly led the way. Burns’ very Passion half excused him; so far from its being Refinement which Burke thought deprived Vice of half its Mischief!
Here is a Sermon for you, you see, which you did not compound for: nor I neither when I began my Letter. But I think I have told you the two Stories aforesaid which will almost deprive my sermon of half its Dulness. And I am now going to transcribe